When the blame game falls flat

America is addicted to sports, bringing with it the obsessive need to dissect even the most insignificant morsels of these silly games that command so much of our attention. (Of which this post, and web site, are but a tiny piece.)

Those who exist under that white-hot glare experience the full spectrum of human judgments, not least of which is blame.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich experienced this during the Finals as he rarely, if ever, has during his Hall-of-Fame career. The details are permanently etched in Spurs lore: Spurs up five, less than half a minute remaining in Game 6, Popovich sits defensive anchor Tim Duncan for not one but two crucial possessions. Miami grabs an offensive rebound, and hits 3-pointers, on both to force overtime. The Heat win the game, and then the series two days later.

A Google search for “Game 6 Gregg Popovich’s fault” on Tuesday got 408,000 results. The general consensus among the critics: How could you possibly take Duncan, one of the best rebounders and defenders in the game, off the court for such a critical possession? Then, after that didn’t work, how could you possibly do it again?

1. The Spurs had tremendous success subbing Duncan out for more mobile defenders on late defensive stands — typically Boris Diaw — throughout the season.

An unofficial review of the play-by-play from last season uncovered 10 games prior to the Finals that Popovich sat Duncan for defensive purposes while leading by six points or less in the final minute. Spurs opponents were 3 for 14 in that span, with two free throws earned. They were just 1 for 9 on eight possessions trailing by three points, with the only make coming on Jarrett Jack’s bucket at the end of Overtime No. 1 in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinal series with Golden State.

As they ended up winning that game anyway, there was no reason for Popovich to second-guess the tactic. Indeed, he likely felt he’d discovered a pretty effective little wrinkle, as evidenced by his willingness to deploy it again even after Miami’s first 3-pointer.

2. The odds of everything breaking the way it did down the stretch were so minute that the biggest factor, by a gigantic margin, was dumb luck.

This is a reality of life on planet Earth that most human beings, and especially Americans, and even more especially American sports fans, are reluctant to acknowledge. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work hard and the world will be your oyster. Indeed, another poster at Pounding the Rock ascribed Popovich’s alleged botching of Game 6 to the most banal of sports cliches: He didn’t want it badly enough.

Except strange things can, and so often do happen. Take the final 30 seconds of Game 6, in which:

* The Spurs gave up offensive rebounds on successive possessions despite grabbing 73.2 percent of available boards to that point without Duncan, just a hair off the league average;

* The Heat capitalized on those rebounds with 3-pointers in scramble situations.

Dr. Sandy Norman, chair of the mathematics department at UTSA, recently estimated that the odds of all these events happening in succession at a cool 1 in 5,000. Basically, the Spurs could have defended the final two possessions with Patty Mills and four clones and still succeeded far more often than not. And that’s before overtime, or Game 7.

Recognizing the flukiness of such a crushing defeat isn’t nearly as satisfying as venting on a tangible scapegoat. In this case, and so many others, the coach does nicely. Perhaps Popovich does deserve some measure of criticism, just as a player who misses a wide-open jump shot at the buzzer. No matter how good a look it was, all that really matters is whether it went in.

But coaching is a different animal. Rather than the outcome of any particular decision, the real testing grounds for coaches comes in the soundness of their strategy. In this instance, Popovich did what great coaches are supposed to do — rather than knee-jerk or panic, he stuck to proven tactics.